As a kid, what was your most "drooled over" communications receiver? (Include photo)

[majoco]

At about 8yo I got a crystal set for Christmas. A friend of my Dad modified it to get the 49m band which was jumping in the 1950's with all the propaganda in Europe - we lived in the UK then. A couple of years later I persuaded my Dad to buy me something better from the war surplus stores in London and in the New Year a large box arrived with a Marconi R1475 in it. We soon had it set up and no drooling was necessary! A 75 foot wire from my second floor bedroom received worldwide stations - many times I woke up in the wee small hours with my headphones on making strange noises!

 

[ka3jjz]

This was mine. Quite a beauty and worked VERY well for its time. The Allied (nee Radio Shack) SX-190. The AX-190 was its ham-radio only cousin.



Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

Here's one I also badly wanted as a kid, and later owned for a long time. The Drake R4B. This was a very fine radio in its day, terrific audio, true passband tuning, a notch filter that really worked - this receiver almost had it all, and when they came out with the FS1 Synthesizer- the late Perry Ferrell told me there was less than 1000 of these made - it became a helluva general coverage radio

 

[ratboy]

This was mine. Quite a beauty and worked VERY well for its time. The Allied (nee Radio Shack) SX-190. The AX-190 was its ham-radio only cousin.

View attachment 160607

Mike

I have 2 SX-190's. One looks and works great, the other has some unknown issue that has random bands almost totally deaf and so far, I haven't been able to figure out what the problem is. I always wanted one and bought the messed up one on Ebay, and as expected, the seller packed it badly and the main tuning knob got slammed hard enough that the dial became detatched. I don't think the impact was the cause of it's other problems, as several bands work perfectly. The second one was packed correctly and survived the trip from Washington state to NW Ohio without a scratch. I just noticed, I used to use the same model of speaker as in the pic above on mine. I have several of them, along with a half dozen of the "minimus" speakers sold under several brand names, like RCA and Realistic.

 

[w8jfj]

For me it it was and is my grandfather's Hallicrafters SX-100. I first started playing with in the mid 60's (I was all of 10 years old). More than not it has outperformed other receivers (SDR configs, ICOM's, etc) that I have. Still going strong.